Ruby's Tears | Marz Community Brewing

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A big thanks out to Joe for this beaut.
Batch 366 from a 500mL bottle.

Ruby's Tears pours a bold grapefruit juice orange, and a volcano of bubbly white foam erupts up the glasses entirety. Once relieved, it settles as a nice little cap with spotty patches left behind.

Once again, the color might imply where this beer is headed. Grapefruit and blood orange juices dominate, with a salty ocean breeze and damp earth to support it. A pleasant barn house funk about it peaks out from the depths.

This one is not for the salt or sour timid. A wonderful blend really, and the flavor and feel are expressed together as one. There is a salty buoyancy about it, with very tart lemon, lime, and pink grapefruit flavors that burst and make every inch of the mouth and cheeks pucker. It ends sharp, and dry, with bubbles foaming all around.

Ruby's Tears is an experience more than just a beer. It's wonderfully refreshing, pleasantly unique, yet simple and satisfying in the best of ways. I would welcome this any time the unquenchable craving for an easy drinking tart and salty beer arises, which is surprisingly pretty often.

L: Poured from a tallboy can to a weizen glass. Had an amber / pink color and a slightly hazy texture. There was a two inch, foamy, fairly long-lasting head. Not much lacing, though.

S: A decent, but not spectacular, aroma of citrus fruit, a floral element, salt, and malt.

T: Tasted of a mild amount of salt (less than in normal goses), a bit of malt (particularly in the finish), the aforementioned floral quality - advertised hibiscus, a hint of coriander, and some citrus (lemon and lime). In general, this is a decent flavor, though it may be too subtle for its own good. Not bad, though.

F: A solid amount of carbonation with a smooth finish. Medium-bodied.

O: Ruby's Tears is a solidly, easy to drink beer. Not fantastic, but drinkable nonetheless.

Pours a cloudy pink/orange color. 3/4 inch head of an off-pink color. Good retention and slight lacing. Smells of salt, pale malt, citrus hops, floral, and a hint of spruce. Fits the style of a Gose. Mouth feel is smooth and crisp, with a low carbonation level. There is also a slight dryness. Tastes of salt, pale malt, citrus hops, floral, slight wheat, and a hint of spruce. Overall, good appearance, aroma, body, and blend.

Pale pink like amber with a good solid orange body color. Slightly frothy head off pink, to light white in color, and fine bubbled with a good tall three fingers. Pretty aggressive even for a gose but in control.

Slight hints of floral notes on the nose, but a sort of spicy/sweet caramel seems to really pop out. Some hints of brine like quality too which seems to mix in quite a bit strangely. Decent if a bit odd with this noticeable sweetness.

Fairly tasty palate. A grapefruit light tone in the mid palate with a touch of chewy malt and salt. Finishes with excellent bready depth and dough like qualities with a nice tang of brine and faint sourness. Excellent body and depth with classic refreshing quality. Finishes slightly tropical as well it seems and much of the hinted sweetness is luckily left the premises.

A bit out there on the nose, but added ingredients seemed to have driven well, with a superb feeling palate. Nice brew.

Straight pour from a 16oz can to an oversized wineglass (Jester King stemware, duh). This has some packaging information printed in black ink on the underside of the can, but it’s not clear to me whether it indicates a January 18, 2017 or January 26, 2017 packaging date (“26.01.18 FL #193”). Either way, it should be a bit over or under two months old at this point. Refrigerated for several days prior to consumption.

Appearance (4.25): Fruit punch. That’s what this looks like, with a fizzy component. It pours out with a solid two fingers of faded lavender foam, fairly crisp and fizzy, which dies down at an average pace for the style, leaving just a bit of fizzy film on the surface of the body. Which, for what it’s worth, is an insanely gorgeous reddish-fuschia color and lightly hazy. Hachi machi, this thing is pretty.

Smell (4.25): The nose is mostly dominated by clean, crisp, slightly citrusy acidic notes, along with sweet, floral, beautiful hibiscus. (I really love hibiscus.) Light earth, floury crackers, and a bit of straw add a bit of depth, while bright lemon tones pop up a bit more as the beer opens up. Still, the hibiscus, earth, and lemon zest definitely characterize the different parts of the aroma.

Taste (4.0): Ooh, the hibiscus here actually balances out the flavor more than your average gose. It leads with a touch of generic lacto tartness, kind of a clean, plain Greek yogurt twang, followed by sweet, floral, rounded hibiscus flavor that’s not as concentrated as, say, hibiscus tea, but more like hibiscus soda. A nice, not-too-sour but pleasantly tart lemon flavor comes in right near the front and hangs on through the remaineder of the drink. It’s like lightly sweetened lemonade, contributing a very nice, somewhat restrained acidic component. It’s got a set of earthy, slightly bready flavors that become more clear toward the back end of the palate, with generic earth and a touch of floury crackers, along with a very light mixture of light brown sugar and lemon zest. I think the coriander is creating an earthy, citrusy bridge between the malt and the hibiscus, and it’s working very well. If there’s any salt here, it’s contributing to the earthy flavors and drying it out a bit more than it would otherwise.

Mouthfeel (4.0): Really, really smooth, but a bit off-style, I think. Maybe for the better, though. The body is light and smooth, with a dry feel from the start, but with just enough slickness attached to the hibiscus that it’s still somewhat, very pleasantly, soft. Carbonation is surprisingly restrained, but the result is that it’s more fine-grained and blends with the aforementioned slickness nicely. Meanwhile, the acid and understated salt dry out the body nicely. In the end it’s a little slicker than “crushable,” but it’s extremely satisfying to drink.

Overall (4.0): Honestly? I really dig this beer. A lot. It feels a bit off-style in a couple of ways, I think, but the result is a handful of characteristics that I dig more than the corresponding characteristics in an average gose. Also, the interplay between the hibiscus and coriander caught me by surprise: it works very, very well, and I love it. This may not be the most authentic gose, but goddamnit is it good. Highly recommended.

A: The beer is a little hazy yellowish purple in color and has a moderate amount of visible carbonation. It poured with a short bright white head that has very good retention properties and consistently covered the surface.
S: Light aromas of hibiscus are present in the nose.
T: The taste follows the smell, but has notes of sour limes and hints of salt that go along with the hibiscus.
M: It feels a bit more than light-bodied on the palate with a moderate amount of carbonation. There is a bit of a creamy feel that coats your mouth. No tartness is perceptible.
O: This beer has some refreshing properties to it with the sour citrus.

A: Pours a lightly hazy medium pinkish burnt orange in color with moderate amounts of fine active visible carbonation rising from the bottom of the glass and moderate golden yellow + reddish pink colored highlights. The beer has a three finger tall fizzy foamy pale pink head that quickly reduces to a large patch of thin film covering the entire surface of the beer and a thin ring at the edges of the glass. Light amounts of lacing are observed.

T: Upfront there are moderate flavors of slightly sour wheat malts. That is followed by a light to moderate flavor of hibiscus and coriander with a light to moderate flavor of tart lime citrus. There is a light amount of briny saltiness towards the finish with a light lingering tartness.

M: Just shy of medium bodied with moderate amounts of carbonation. Light to moderate amounts of acidic prickliness.

O: Easy to drink with well hidden alcohol (though a touch high in ABV for a Gose) and refreshing. Enjoyable and reminds me of a hibiscus tea they server at a local Middle Eastern restaurant.